In a typical laser thermal printing system the donor and receiver elements are kept into close proximity to transfer dye from the donor element to the receiver element. The donor and receiver are close together but microspaced to prevent sticking between the donor and receiver, particularly when the microspace is evacuated to enhance the dye transfer efficiency. The microspace prevents impression of surface defects of the donor on the receiver. The microspace is maintained by coating a thin layer of matt beads on the donor or receiver surface. U.S. Pat. No. 4,772,582 discloses the use of beads to maintain spacing between the donor and receiver.
Although surface contact is virtually eliminated by coating a thin layer of matt beads on the donor or receiver, micro contacts, shadowing artifacts of matt beads, and artifacts due to scattering of light from the beads remain. Some post processing of the image, such as index matching of beads, lamination, high fusion, or other processing, may be required. Post processing contributes to a reduced modular transfer function (MTF) for the image. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that it would be highly desirable to eliminate matt beads as spacers between the donor and receiver elements and thereby eliminate image noise and artifacts caused by bead shadows.